Daughter of Lir (8 page)

There was, with that, the true treasure, well hidden and not
spoken of, but Emry had assured himself that it was there: tools for working
wood and metal, and the makings of a forge. The one who knew how to work it had
come in with the caravan.

He had the pleasure of seeing Rhian flat astonished, gaping
at the man who stood beside Hoel’s donkey. It was revenge, rich and sweet.

There were other men he could have summoned for this:
masters of the art, great artisans of Lir. But on this venture that was perhaps
worse than futile, that could end in death for them all, Emry had been most
carefully instructed. “Let it be a good craftsman,” his father had said,
“strong of mind and body, and skilled in the working of metal. But choose one
whom we can afford to lose.”

This man of Long Ford had come to Emry the day after the
priestess had left that village, and offered himself for whatever service Emry
might ask of him—quite like Rhian, if she had but known it. Emry had reckoned
him a gift of the Goddess. He had gone where Emry bade him, gathered the things
that he needed, and joined the caravan as it passed through the cities of the
river.

Now they were all together on the eastward road. For well or
ill, Emry thought. For death or life. And maybe, after all, they could stop
this war.

The sea of grass stretched away into a blue distance.
There were mountains on the far rim of it, like a mist on the edge of the
world. All between was long rolling plain, windswept grass, and sometimes, if
they were fortunate, the trickle of a stream.

Rhian rode well ahead of the caravan—safe enough this close
to the river. She would have left her companions behind completely if the mare
had let her.

She had said no word to Bran. When they ferried across the
river, she traveled in the last boat and he in the first. He did not try to
speak to her. He barely looked at her. He was angry, she thought. No wonder,
either: she had left without farewell, abandoned him as if he mattered nothing
to her at all.

He mattered a great deal, or she would have been able to
take proper leave of him. But a man did not understand such things.

The Goddess had her own antic humor. To bring them all
together: one who might be brother, one who might be father, one who had been
lover.

She had said nothing to Conn of who she was. At first she
had kept silent because he was too weak and too preoccupied to hear her. Later,
when he should have known her by her name at least, and by what the men of the
caravan said of her, he had shown no sign at all of remembrance. She was silent
then because she was angry. How could he forget her? How could he have
abandoned her? Did he hate her so much, because she was no blood of his at all,
nor of Anansi’s, either? Maybe he had gone because he could not bear to look at
her, and once he was gone, he had burned her out of his memory.

She had not told Emry the secrets that the priestess had
told her in the temple, either. She had gone to him, intending to tell him, but
as with Conn, the words would not come. She had baffled him instead, and convinced
him that she was at least half mad.

Maybe she was. She was either Entry's sister or Conn’s
daughter. She could not be both. Bran’s lover . . .

Poor man. He had lost her to her own pique, and Cara to the
temple in Lir. What had been left for him but a venture that could kill him?

From where she rode, if she angled somewhat from the
straight track, she could look back at the caravan plodding under the
impossible width of the sky. Emry’s hellions, even in the plain gear of caravan
guards, had a look about them that spoke of princely indulgence. They could not
help but betray a glint of copper at ear or throat, or the tinkle of a
bridle-bell.

Bran walked beside Hoel on his donkey. Even from so far
away, she could see how broad his shoulders were. He was almost as broad if
never as tall as the prince on the handsome grey that, like his men’s bits of
gaud and frippery, he had been unable to let go.

She had yearned for so many nights to lie again in Bran’s
familiar arms—and now he was within her reach, she wanted only to see him gone.
He did not belong here. He belonged in Long Ford, grieving maybe, but safe.

She belonged here. It had startled her when she crossed the
river, when she set foot on the farther bank. There where the grass began,
where the world rolled forever toward the horizon, where the sky was so deep
one could drown in it, for the first time in all her life, she felt as if she
had come home.

She had never expected that. Long Ford had been a cage. Lir
was a dream, too vague to touch. She had never even dreamed of this, unless her
dreams of flying free had meant that she would, and should, come here.

She was laden with secrets. Who she was, what she was, the
truth of her kin and birth, filled her till she ached. But she could not speak of
it to any of those who traveled with her. Even the thought of it locked her
throat shut and drained her heart of words.

o0o

As late as they had begun the journey, they were barely
out of sight of the river before it was time to camp for the night. Already the
whole world seemed made of grass and sky. There were trees in little copses,
but those were thinning.

They camped by one such, where there was a stream and a
little shelter against the immensity of the sky. In the end, nearly half of the
caravan’s people had come with the master, refusing to let him go on without
them. They made camp with the ease of long practice. Emry’s men were less
skilled, but made up for that in eagerness to learn. The caravaneers regarded
them as men might regard a pack of hound puppies: half in indulgence, half in
scorn.

Bran had acquired a surprising array of skills since he left
Long Ford. He could raise a tent with admirable dispatch. A fire he had always
been able to build—he was a smith, after all—but he had never made bread before.

Rhian squatted beside him as he waited for his bread to
bake. He hunched his shoulders but did not move away. “I didn’t know you could
cook,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said. “Unless it’s bread. Bread is like metal.
Simple, if you have the trick of it.”

It was baking well: its fragrance made her mouth water. “You
can go back tomorrow,” she said.

His eyes were fixed on the campfire. She willed him to turn,
to look at her, to be lost—because he never had been able to resist her beauty.

He knew that too well. She wondered if it cost him anything
to turn so resolutely away from her. “Back?” he asked. “Why should I go back?”

“Because it’s dangerous,” she said. “You could be killed.”

“I didn’t do this because of you,” he said.

“No?”

“No.” He slipped the first of his loaves from the coals,
shaking off the film of ash. His hands, long inured to heat, made easy work of
the hot loaf, breaking it in two, laying one half in front of her. “You’re not
the only creature who ever dreamed of flight.”

“You wouldn’t have left, if I hadn’t gone before you.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I’m not turning back because you
ask. I want this. Maybe not as much as you, but I do want it.”

“Even if it kills you?”

“Does that matter to you?”

She set her lips together. She had known this man—well, she
thought. Now she began to wonder if she had known him at all. “You seemed
content,” she said. “More than content. Happy. Is it because Cara left, too?”

“Rhian,” he said, and she had never heard him so close to
losing his patience, “I never left because of a woman. I left because these princes
needed a smith, and—yes—because I had nothing to keep me in Long Ford. I want
to see the wild tribes. I want to learn what a chariot is, and if I may, to
make one.”

“If you stay,” she said, “you’ll not be invited to my bed.”

He rose. His cheeks were flushed above the heavy shadow of
his beard. “If you invited me, I would decline to go.”

He left her sitting by his fire, with the broken halves of
his loaf cooling at her feet. Her heart was still and cold. She had not meant
to say what she had said. It had escaped her in the heat of temper. How dared
he want anything apart from her? How dared he be his own man?

Half of her wanted to laugh, and half to weep. She lifted
the portion of the loaf that he had broken for her. It was still warm. It was
fragrant; its flour was well ground, its flavor rich and a little sweet, as if
he had mixed it with honey.

She ate it all, and eyed the other half. But he might come
back.

She would not be there when he came. Dal was waiting for
her. He would give her pleasure without pain. He had little enough
conversation, but she did not care for that. Not tonight.

But instead of Dal, when she went to her sleeping place,
there was Emry tending her fire. Emry who, she knew then to the core of her
bones, was her brother, her mother’s son. It was the last of the light on his
hair that was so much like her own, fighting any restraint he tried to lay on
it, and his hand on his knee, broad in the palm but long in the fingers, and
the smallest finger somewhat crooked. Her hair, her hands.

She clenched her fists and thrust them behind her. “Where is
Dal?” she demanded.

He looked up from prodding at the coals. “I’m very well, I
give you thanks. And you?”

“I’m not bedding you tonight,” she said.

He mimed massive shock. “What! Are you suggesting that I
would dare ask a woman to—”

“Then why are you here?”

“To make you angry, it seems,” he said. The fire was burning
to his satisfaction; he raised the tripod over it—her tripod, no less—and hung
her pot from the hook. Something was in it. Rabbit, she supposed, and herbs—she
caught the scent of them.

People were watching. Her bit of tent was pitched somewhat
apart, under clear sky, but they could all see. Dal must be standing guard: he
was not among those who stared. Nor was she about to ask Emry again what had
become of him.

“If you didn’t come to my bed,” she said, “did you come to
order me back across the river?”

“I have no more right to do that than to demand that you lie
with me.” His antic mood was gone. His eyes were level on her, their blue as
deep and clear as the sky over him. “No. I came to ask you another thing. The traders’
speech—you know it?”

“A little,” she said.

“I should like you to learn more than a little. And the
language of the wild tribes—Conn says he knows it. Will you learn it from him?”

“Gladly,” she said, and she meant it. But she asked, “Why do
you ask me? Why not one of the others?”

“The smith will learn. And I. And anyone else with the will
or the wit. Them I can command. You,” he said, “I have to ask.”

She looked him up and down, not meaning to be insolent, but
wanting to consider what he had said. She had never been a personage before,
someone who was asked rather than ordered. She was not entirely sure what she
thought of that. It was exhilarating, and frightening. It was like all her
secrets.

“Why?” she asked him. “Because of the mare?”

He nodded. “Will you?”

“Of course I will.” She watched his shoulders sag in relief.
That too was strange.

“We have to be able to talk to them,” he said. “To their
makers if we can, to know how a chariot is made. To their leaders certainly, in
our guise as traders. You they’ll see as a prodigy. Their women don’t walk
under the sun, don’t show their faces, don’t speak before the men. You do all
of that. We’re going to tell the truth of you, that you serve a living
goddess.”

“Yes,” she said. “And that the mare brings me there,
returning to the lands from which her ancestors came. We were those people
once. We were wild tribes. We kept our women shut in tents, and forbade them
the horses—to ride or even to touch or see them. Then the White Mare led us to
the cities, and taught us the ways of the Goddess.”

“You understand,” he said.

She flashed a grin at him. “Think of it,” she said. “If we
could win them as the cities won us once—maybe the war won’t come at all.”

“Maybe not,” he said, not as glad of the thought as she, but
not excessively somber, either.

It could happen, she thought. They could do it. With the
mare, with her secrets—with the young lords of Lir, and the caravaneers, and
Bran and Conn. All of them. They could do it. The Goddess would help them.

“By all the gods of the blue heaven,” said Dias,
stretching till his bones cracked. He winced, clutched his head, dropped down
with a groan. “
Ai
! That wasn’t
kumiss, that was poison.”

“That was mares’ milk brewed into fire,” Minas said.

“Same thing,” said his brother. Dias rolled over and buried
his face in the tumbled furs. “Wake me when the world ends.”

Minas tipped him out on the tent’s floor and held him down
when he fought. He was strong, but Minas was both larger and stronger. It was
no effort to wait him out.

He lay still at last, panting, wincing at the pain in his
head. Minas smiled down at him. “The world ends now,” he said, “unless we push
the sun into the sky. Come out and help me.”

“You’re mad.”

“Perfectly,” Minas said. “Are you coming?”

He did not wait to see if Dias would come. The young men’s
tent was full of snoring bodies. Minas stepped lightly over them. He heard Dias
behind, marked by a trail of grunts and curses. He grinned to himself as he
stepped out into the chill of the morning.

The sun was not yet up, but the sky was brightening. The
steppe rolled away before him, patched still with the last of the late-spring
snow. The camp of the Windriders stretched behind. The flocks were bleating,
the cattle lowing. Away to the north where the horse-herds had grazed in the
night, one of the stallions screamed a challenge.